Abortion Bill Raises Moral Issues
Last week, Congress addressed the single most divisive issue in politics today, abortion. In a landmark vote, the Senate overwhelming voted to ban the procedure known as partial birth abortion. Now it heads to President Bush's desk for his signature. This vote was met with both jubilation and anger.
Abortion is the one topic everyone has an opinion about. It is the most polarizing political issue in American politics since slavery. Therefore it is extremely difficult to write a column about, and even more difficult to change anyone's mind. But worthwhile goals seldom come easily.
Abortion is an issue that most everyone has wrestled with, and come to very different conclusions. Some people, who are liberal on virtually every issue, consider themselves pro-life. This isn't difficult to understand; after all, if you oppose capital punishment, you almost have to start asking some tough questions about abortion.
Since abortion was declared a constitutional right by the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, there have been well over 30 million abortions in the United States.
Stop and consider this for a moment. That's 30 million - more than three times the population of New York City. That's a lot of kids who were never given a chance at life. Who were those kids? Who might they have been? Could one of them have discovered a cure for cancer or AIDS? Could there have been another Albert Einstein, Mother Teresa, or Martin Luther King? Sadly, we will never know.
Only the most radical abortion supporters would deny that it is a brutal procedure. The act of collapsing a baby's skull cannot be thought of as "no big deal" in most people's minds, regardless of their opinions on the legality of the procedure. Many of the young women who are driven to have abortions by fear or desperation inevitably find themselves emotionally scarred for life. Think the National Organization for Women cares about this?
In one of the great ironies of our time, one of abortion's biggest opponents today is Norma McCorvey. You may not recognize her name, but you know who she is. She is the former Jane Roe, of Roe v. Wade. The former poster child for abortion on demand, she has since rejected abortion. Earlier this year, she filed an unsuccessful request that the Roe decision be reconsidered.
There is a myth that women are overwhelmingly pro-choice. A recent study by the Center for the Advancement of Women, an abortion rights organization, found that 51 percent of the women surveyed supported banning abortion, or limiting it only to cases of rape, incest, and to protect the life of the mother. Another 17 percent wanted stricter restrictions on abortion than now exist. Faye Wattleton, head of the organization that conducted the study, described these findings as "alarming." Predictably, this study has gone largely unreported in the mainstream media.
One of the pro-choice arguments is this: If you oppose abortion, then don't have one. This argument is somewhat reminiscent of pro-slavery arguments of the 1800s: If you oppose slavery, don't own a slave. Indeed, there are many parallels between the abortion debate and the debate over slavery, in which it was argued that slave owners should be given the "choice" to enslave others, thus denying choice to those who were enslaved. Ronald Reagan put it best, "Abortion is advocated only by persons who have themselves been born."
Most abortion advocates claim it is a women's rights issue. They are somewhat correct (though not in the way they think), as baby girls get aborted as well. Some of these advocates also claim that to oppose abortion is to be a chauvinist. If this is true, the chauvinists are in good company, as both Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were opponents of abortion. Stanton described abortion as "infanticide." Susan B. Anthony said, "Guilty? Yes. No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; But oh, thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime!"
The debate over abortion will continue for years and probably be the most divisive political issue of our lifetimes. Politicians and doctors will continue to debate the procedure. But for the over 30 million infants who were never born, it doesn't matter. They never had a chance to make friends, to decide where to go to college, what career to pursue, who to marry, and other decisions we all make. They never had a chance at life, something we all take for granted.
That's a lot of choices they have been denied.
John Brown is a senior in political science at the University of Tennessee @ Knoxville. Contact him at johnnyb325@aol.com, or visit www.johnnorrisbrown.com. This column originally appeared in the October 28, 2003 edition of The Daily Beacon, available here.